Gandhinagar Current Affairs - 2019

The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved setting up of a unified authority for regulating all financial services in international financial services centres (IFSCs) in the country. The government has approved a bill to set up a unified regulator.

Fact Box

The first IFSC in India was set up at GIFT City in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

Promoting the Ease of Doing Business

IFSCs are set-up to bring back the financial services and transactions that are currently carried out in offshore financial centres by Indian corporate entities and overseas branches or subsidiaries of financial institutions (FIs) to India.

In order to ensure this, the business and regulatory environment must be comparable to other leading international financial centres in the world like London and Singapore. Currently, the banking, capital markets and insurance sectors in IFSCs are regulated by multiple regulators like the RBI, SEBI and IRDAI respectively.

For IFSCs to attain its objectives there is a need for inter-regulatory coordination. The establishment of a unified financial regulator for IFSCs will result in providing a world-class regulatory environment to market participants from the ease of doing business perspective.

For the setting up of a unified regulator, the Union cabinet has approved the International Financial Services Centres Authority Bill, 2019.